My Action Research Plan

I have settled on a new action research topic. I thought about how I could really make the research part of my existing situation like the Dana text suggested. With this in mind I am focusing my research on a Leveled Literacy Intervention program that my district purchased last year. We only received training and materials partway through the school year so we didn't have a full year of assessment data. However, as I think back I remember many such programs which were purchased in the past only to fall by the wayside in a few short years. Here is my inquiry question. In what ways can struggling first grade readers benefit from consistent Leveled Literacy Intervention instruction? This program is really designed for the severely struggling readers who often may wind up being retained. As a result it is crucial to be able to reach them.

My campus takes our beginning-of-year TPRI results and ranks students from highest to lowest based on a compilation of TPRI data. Each teacher will identify the three or four lowest performing students based on this assessment data. These will be the students who will receive LLI instruction. As a grade level, along with our administrators, we will monitor these students throughout the year based on the TPRI results as well as Rigby running records and Dolch sight words. Additional data will be the LLI reading level. The LLI groups may be fluid based on progress. If a student improves to the point of reading on grade level he or she may be exited from the program and another student may receive LLI instruction.

At the end of the year we will assess whether students tended to make reading improvements across the board in reading. Additionally, we will discuss during PLC meetings whether we found any other areas of improvement among participants. We will look for growth in other academic subjects, behavior, social skills, confidence, etc. Some of this will be based on data such as grades. For other areas we will use informal teacher observation to determine growth or progress.